The present invention generally relates to a component container and, more particularly, to a container for accommodating therein a plurality of small electric and/or electronic components in an orderly fashion convenient for transporting, storing and/or removing thereof.
In particular, the present invention pertains to a component container for electric and/or electronic components, such as resistors, capacitors or semi-conductor elements, of a type having no lead wire outwardly extending therefrom, which type of electric and/or electronic component is hereinafter referred to as a "wireless component".
In place of an electric component having at least one pair of lead wires outwardly extending therefrom for external electric connection with other circuit elements, the wireless component is currently used. Most electric and/or electronic wireless component currently used are of a cubic body having any one of the width, length and depth within the range of about 0.5 to 5 mm. and has at least one pair of electroconductive terminal pieces attached to the body in spaced or electrically insulated relation to each other, the electroconductive terminal pieces corresponding in function to the lead wires referred to above.
During storage and/or transportation of the wireless components, they are placed at random in a receptacle such as a bag. Particularly, during transportation of the wireless components accommodated within the bag, since any one of the wireless components does not assume a definite position relative to the others, they tend to rub against each other to such an extent that the electroconductive terminal pieces, which are generally made of a foil or film of electroconductive material, of some of the wireless components, or resistance films in case of the wireless components being resistors, are adversely affected. Moreover, since the bag is easy to open, there is a great possibility that one or more wireless components of a kind different from the wireless components contained in the bag may be mixed up to such an extent that a time-consuming sorting is subsequently required. In this way, the use of the bag for storage and/or transportation of the wireless components often provides a problem associated with quality control of the electric and/or electronic components.
Furthermore, so far as the wireless components are placed at random within the bag, when it comes to successive mounting of the wireless components on a printed circuit board or boards by means of an automatic component mounting machine of a type having a component supply unit including a plurality of magazines one for wireless components of one kind, time-consuming and labouring work is required to transfer the wireless components from the bag into corresponding magazines and then align the transferred wireless components in a predetermined fashion within the magazine.